Presentation Page

Overview

• US incarcerates more people per capita then anywhere else
• Incarceration rates: extremely costly for taxpayers
  • Halifax spends $21,000 per inmate and $78 per county resident
• Goal: social determinants of incarceration & recidivism in Halifax, VA
• Approach: ecological model
  • How factors at the individual, relationship, community, and policy levels shape behavior
    
    
• Workflow: illustrates relationship between factors
  
  

Data Sources

• Exploratory data analysis and mapping for factors:
  • Unemployment, substance abuse, affordable housing, family structure

    Source	Topic	Description
    Vera Institute for Justice	Incarceration	County, state, and national incarceration trends
    Virginia State Police Crime Reports	Crime	Incident-level crime data
    Housing and Urban Development Picture of Subsidized Households	Housing	Characteristics of subsidized housing population
    Housing and Urban Development Low-Income Housing Tax Credit	Housing	Details of low-income housing tax credit supported properties
    Bureau of Labor Statistics	Unemployment	Unemployment rates
    Virginia Department of Health	Substance Abuse	Opioid prescription and overdose data
    Virginia Department of Health	Substance Abuse	Excessive drinking data
    National Center for Health Statistics	Teen Pregnancy	Teen birth rates
    American Community Survey/Decennial Census	General	Demographics

• Challenges
  • Lack of relevance to formerly incarcerated population
  • Improper spatial resolution
  • Incarceration vs crime

Findings

Background

• Halifax is a rural county of 34,000 with 60% of population being White, and 34% being Black
• Racial disparities in income: White median income ($48,000) vs Black median income ($30,400)

Incarceration, Crime & Arrests

• Crime, arrest, incarceration & jails vs prisons
• Prison incarceration rates have consistently increased over the past 3-4 decades

Employment

• Unemployment is a large indicator of crime and intersects w/ ecological model on multiple levels
• Halifax has slightly higher unemployment rate than VA avg

Housing

• Ecological model:
  • Policy: eligibility for low-income opportunities limited by prior convictions
  • Interpersonal: reintegration into the community
• Size of annual number of jail discharges relative to subsidized housing capacity: 3x
• Housing accessibility (physical proximity)

Substance Abuse

• Opioid prescription rates are declining, but still higher than VA and USA
• Steadily increasing rate of binge drinking
• Policy level: racial disparities in marijuana possession (and drug-related crime)

Family Structure

• Family structure highly affects child's development
• Teen mothers more likely to drop out of high school, be unemployed, have lower incomes
  • Low levels of family supervision -> high rates of juvenile delinquency (cycle)
• Teen births, housing opportunities, and racial discrepancies are all important aspects